[LINK] Re: ACCC vs Google & Telstra [misleading results]

[Adam Todd]

At 07:03 AM 20/07/2007, sylvano wrote:
>On Friday 20 July 2007 01:00, Janet Hawtin wrote:
>
><snip>
>
> > I don't really understand why a consumer organisation is going to
> > court in order to change this unless they are going to mandate that
> > consumers are able to see all the alternative products. I can't
> > imagine that would be easy to do so I can only assume if the ACCC wins
> > I get to see less options.

This is a misconception.  ACCC is not seeking to sue Google to 
prevent consumers being able to see alternative products.

Trading post could easily ensure it's web site is listed in the top 
ten rankings by being truthful and honest and applying keywords and phrases.

What Trading Post did was enter the names of it's competitors into an 
electronic directory to cause consumers to be taken, under the 
competitors names, to the Trading Post.

It would be like Telstra buying a full page add in the newspaper 
selling mobile phones under the OPTUS name and putting Telstra 
telephone numbers in the ad for consumers to call.

The consumer thinks they are calling Optus.  That is misleading and 
deceptive practices.


>Only because the ACCC is commissioned to administer the Act, and so they
>assess particular contexts, see if the Act applies and determine the
>likelihood of legal action succeeding, priorities on acting given resources,
>etc.

Assuming someone brings a large enough case to them.  They tend not 
to administer the act when it comes to Joe and Jane.

Although I'm sure "Jan" isn't happy right now ;)  And that ain't 
because the yellow pages ad wasn't inserted :)

>I agree with you that the variety of search results is important and 
>expected,
>but the wrangling that is in play relates to specifically to paid ad
>placements and how different commercial entities are leveraging the use of
>Google's commercially based "sponsored link" results, which aren't search
>results.  They're advertisements.

Exactly, however again, reiterating the point it's not about 
sponsoring a link, that's just a way for Google to defeat Tax laws :)

It's about knowingly being deceptive to bring about the thought in a 
consumers mind that they were going to one of the Car sellers web sites.

If the Trading Post had bought the words and the link to the web site 
was the site of the car seller, then there would be no deception.

It could have done so and included the text "And don't forget to look 
in the Trading post" as the contextual information.  But it didn't, 
it used the names of it's competitors and redirected those consumers 
to it's web site.

>A regular Joe user, coming to google, and typing in "blah" may click 
>on a paid
>link at the top of the search results naturally assuming that it was the best
>natural result, and not an ad. ie mislead.

Really?  People are that stupid they can't see the difference?

Then again.  People are that stupid, so are Judges.